Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Sam Harris has (another) great post on the muddled notion of "freewill" that obscures so much of our thinking about religion and morality here: Morality Without "Freewill". Much of this is agreeable although I find something elusively off the mark about the way he's framing the discussion.

Two brief ideas. First, the native conception of freedom that many non-philosophers seem to be operating with is of some inexplicable force, originating with us, that defies the ordinary physical, naturally lawful order of events. Free acts are little miracles, as it were; violations of the causal closure of the physical world. This view is completely at odds with what we know about the physical world and how brains operate.

Second, people's motivations are frequently backwards on the topic. If some argument or piece of evidence suggests that we don't have freedom in this wrongheaded sense, then that is typically taken as an irrevocable reductio of that argument. If the implication of argument x is that we don't have freewill, then x is immediately objected because we have an incorrigible intuition of our own freewill, or, at least, we dislike that implication intensely enough to be motivated to reject the argument.

Part of what Harris is struggling with in the book (The Moral Landscape) is providing a clear conceptual scaffolding that can serve as an alternative to the old one. People's inability to extricate their thinking from the hopeless mess of religious moral notions is also the source of a lot of the resistance he's getting, even from people who aren't overtly religious.

6 comments:

"People's inability to extricate their thinking from the hopeless mess of religious moral notions is also the source of a lot of the resistance he's getting, even from people who aren't overtly religious."

I think you're making a common mistake here. It's true that people are very confused about free will, and it's also true that much of our confusion comes from our moral impulses. But it's not true to say that these moral impulses are a result of religion. If anything, religious morality is a side-effect of, or parasite upon people's innate moral impulses. And of course, our delusion of having free will is probably just an evolutionary adaptation that long predates religion.

FWIW, this is an area of active empirical research. We are learning about the boundaries between evolved moral impulses and what can be culturally influenced; learning about how much people really believe in incompatibilism when making moral judgments (not as much as you might think), and so on. Scientists like Viney, Woolfolk, Doris, Darley, Nahmais, Morris, Nadelhoffer, and Turner continue to collect experimental evidence that presents a more refined picture of our innate evolved situation.

IMO, we should focus on learning exactly how the human brain innately make moral judgments, and understanding why that might've evolved, rather than trying to just sweep the whole issue under the rug by claiming it's "religion".

JS, I don't believe Dr. McCormick is claiming that moral impulses are a result of religion. But, rather, that the confusion stems because they think they are a result of religion.

There's a difference between growing up and discovering the utility and innate humanity of moral actions, which most of us would probably agree is a significant part of what morality actually is, and growing up and being told (either directly, or indirectly through society) what is right and wrong.

In the first case we have the fundamentals of morality. In the second case, we have religious morality which is, for the most part, superimposed upon actual morality. Where it differs, the taught religious morality will often triumph. In this case, the people actually believe that their moral actions are a result of religious belief.

I believe Dr. McCormick is stating that the confusion comes, not from the idea that people's moral actions are a result of religion, but rather that the confusion comes because they believe that their morality is based in religion. Because it happens to superimpose so often, it's nearly impossible to separate, and discover what the actual foundation is without significant reflection and fair reasoning.

It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to determine if a religious person's "moral action" (In the case of it being one that actually superimposes on something that is moral) is directly due to fundamental moral instinct, or religious indoctrination. If actions are predicated on beliefs, then the belief need not be fundamental in any sense. However it becomes accepted in the brain, whether realization based on reality, or brainwashing, it will then determine the actions of the individual.

"It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to determine if a religious person's "moral action" (In the case of it being one that actually superimposes on something that is moral) is directly due to fundamental moral instinct, or religious indoctrination."

Regarding his larger point, my wife and most of my friends were raised in officially atheist countries and have never been a part of any religion. They also grew up believing that everything the authorities said was a lie (the old joke goes, "As soon as the official party newspaper says that there is no shortage of butter, that is when you should run out and hoard butter"). Despite having no real moral indoctrination, they have no problem proclaiming moral judgments. They also tend to think that compatibilism is crazy.

I think it's safe to say that innate belief in libertarianism is a byproduct of evolution and is tightly related to our evolutionary programmed moral intuitions. I don't see any evidence that belief in libertarianism is caused by religion. Heck, wasn't it the Calvinists who first popularized compatibilism to a broad population?

Harris wrote a subsequent post and I think he addresses this pretty well. He says:

"The problem with compatibilism, as I see it, is that it tends to ignore that people’s moral intuitions are driven by a deeper, metaphysical notion of free will. That is, the free will that people presume for themselves and readily attribute to others (whether or not this freedom is, in Dennett’s sense, “worth wanting”) is a freedom that slips the influence of impersonal, background causes."

In other words, free will seems to be a succession of, as you called it, "tiny miracles" in which physical causation is violated. This seems to me inextricably linked to the conception of an autonomous personhood (much like the soul) in which we view ourselves as exempt from the causal closure of the universe.

I've always thought that free will was, in most people's minds, inextricably linked with choice.

Bring up the possiblity of not having free will to almost anyone and they may rant on and on about having the ability to choose.

There is no doubt we have many options of various kinds available to us from birth and we learn how to deal with them in one way or another and this becomes a big part of each of our particular personalities.

I think that the philosophically-minded theist, when talking on free will, attempts to demonstrate that one's non-religiousity has exact parallels to their doctrines, faith, religion and so on, to box the opponent in.

If I agree that my atheism has every parallel to a religion, then I must agree that free will exists, as they do.

If I disagree then I'm demonstrating free will despite my protestations of it.

O.K., free will. Before we discuss it, I think it is only fitting that we define it (I mean otherwise, you could be talking about one thing and I could be talking about another, and neither of us would gain anything from the conversation). I normally think of free will as, “ If I could go back in time, I could have done 'X' differently.” That is certainly not the only explanation. Others have offered a more immediate response: One who acts without an immediate threat compelling them to act (e.g. I entered into this contract under my own free will because there was no gun pointed to my head at the time I entered it). The latter is widely accepted in legal circles (one should ask why), the former more accepted in the physical sciences. I am going to argue based on my definition.

If I could go back in time I would have acted differently. Really? Why would you have acted differently? Ignoring the outcome of your decision (which you couldn't have known at the time), why would you have done anything different from what you did? I mean offer an explanation of why you thought what you did seemed liked a good idea at the time and then how you judged the alternatives that didn't seem like a good idea, and why without foreseeing the future, you could have decided on a different course of action? And in that is the irreconcilable paradox of the concept of “free will,” I could have done something different in the past if only I had experienced the future. No doubt; if I could see the winning lottery number tomorrow, I would pick it today, that doesn't equate with, “The number I pick today is totally independent of the experiences I have I had to date.” But the contra causal free will argument will always ignore that and beg the question, “Why did you do what you did when you did it?” And, it will never get answered because there is no answer without accepting paradox as a norm.

Above is my (wholly unqualified) logical argument against contra causal freewill. My real argument against it is, no matter how adamantly the proponents of it will deny it, it requires an intelligence without a material brain. That is an extraordinary claim that has never offered even ordinary evidence.

My book is out:

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Atheism

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Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester. Teaching at CSUS since 1996. My main area of research and publication now is atheism and philosophy of religion. I am also interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and rational decision theory/critical thinking.

Quotes:

"Science. It works, bitches."

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

"Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time. But he loves you! He loves you and he needs money!"George Carlin 1937 - 2008

Many Paths, No God.

I don't go to church, I AM a church, for fuck's sake. I'm MINISTRY. --Al Jourgensen

Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, “It is a matter of faith, and above reason.”- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

If life evolved, then there isn't anything left for God to do.

The universe is not fine-tuned for humanity. Humanity is fine-tuned to the universe. Victor Stenger

Skeptical theists choose to ride the trolley car of skepticism concerning the goods that God would know so as to undercut the evidential argument from evil. But once on that trolley car it may not be easy to prevent that skepticism from also undercutting any reasons they may suppose they have for thinking that God will provide them and the worshipful faithful with life everlasting in his presence. William Rowe

Unless you're one of those Easter-bunny vitalists who believes that personality results from some unquantifiable divine spark, there's really no alternative to the mechanistic view of human nature. Peter Watts

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. E.O. Wilson

Creating humans who could understand the contrast between good and evil without subjecting them to eons of horrible suffering would be an utterly inconsequential matter for an omnipotent being. MM

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity? It would be so easy to improve upon the 10 Commandments. How about "Try not to deep fry all of your food"? Sam Harris

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody--not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms--had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would think--though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one--that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true--that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great

If atheism is a religion, then not playing chess is a hobby.

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything--anything--be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in." Sam Harris, The End of Faith, 36.

"Only a tiny fraction of corpsesfossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water." Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 127.

One cannot take, "believing in X gives me hope, makes me moral, or gives me comfort," to be a reason for believing X. It might make me moral if I believe that I will be shot the moment I do something immoral, but that doesn't make it possible for me to believe it, or to take its effects on me as reasons for thinking it is true. Matt McCormick

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Top Ten Myths about Belief in God

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning.

There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives.

2. Myth: Prayer works.

Numerous studies have now shown that remote, blind, inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of subject's health, psychological states, or longevity. Furthermore, we have no evidence to support the view that people who wish fervently in their heads for things that they want get those things at any higher rate than people who do not.

3. Myth: Atheists are less decent, less moral, and overall worse people than believers.

There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominately non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies.

4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with the descriptions, explanations and products of science.

In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. So we have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion.

5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive the death of the body.

We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. Allegations of spirit chandlers, psychics, ghost stories, and communications with the dead have all turned out to be frauds, deceptions, mistakes, and lies.

6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted. Only belief in God makes people moral.

Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view, not to mention these other famous atheists: Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, John Stuart Mill, Galileo, George Bernard Shaw, Gloria Steinam, James Madison, John Adams, and so on.

7. Myth: Believing in God is never a root cause of significant evil.

The counter examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the direct justification for their perpetrated horrendous evils on humankind are too numerous to mention.

8. Myth: The existence of God would explain the origins of the universe and humanity.

All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins--why are we here, where are we going, what is the point of it all, why is the universe here--still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it isall going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law "create" or "build" a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, "loves" us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans? How could such a being have any sort of personal relationship with beings like us?

9. Myth: Even if it isn't true, there's no harm in my believing in God anyway.

People's religious views inform their voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight. How could any reasonable person think that religious beliefs are insignificant.

10: Myth: There is a God.

Common Criticisms of Atheism (and Why They’re Mistaken)

1. You can’t prove atheism.You can never prove a negative, so atheism requires as much faith as religion.

Atheists are frequently accosted with this accusation, suggesting that in order for non-belief to be reasonable, it must be founded on deductively certain grounds. Many atheists within the deductive atheology tradition have presented just those sorts of arguments, but those arguments are often ignored. But more importantly, the critic has invoked a standard of justification that almost none of our beliefs meet. If we demand that beliefs are not justified unless we have deductive proof, then all of us will have to throw out the vast majority of things we currently believe—oxygen exists, the Earth orbits the Sun, viruses cause disease, the 2008 summer Olympics were in China, and so on. The believer has invoked one set of abnormally stringent standards for the atheist while helping himself to countless beliefs of his own that cannot satisfy those standards. Deductive certainty is not required to draw a reasonable conclusion that a claim is true.

As for requiring faith, is the objection that no matter what, all positions require faith?Would that imply that one is free to just adopt any view they like?Religiousness and non-belief are on the same footing?(they aren’t).If so, then the believer can hardly criticize the non-believer for not believing. Is the objection that one should never believe anything on the basis of faith?Faith is a bad thing?That would be a surprising position for the believer to take, and, ironically, the atheist is in complete agreement.

2. The evidence shows that we should believe.

If in fact there is sufficient evidence to indicate that God exists, then a reasonable person should believe it. Surprisingly, very few people pursue this line as a criticism of atheism. But recently, modern versions of the design and cosmological arguments have been presented by believers that require serious consideration. Many atheists cite a range of reasons why they do not believe that these arguments are successful. If an atheist has reflected carefully on the best evidence presented for God’s existence and finds that evidence insufficient, then it’s implausible to fault them for irrationality, epistemic irresponsibility, or for being obviously mistaken.Given that atheists are so widely criticized, and that religious belief is so common and encouraged uncritically, the chances are good that any given atheist has reflected more carefully about the evidence.

3. You should have faith.

Appeals to faith also should not be construed as having prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence or arguments do. The general view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound, that imposes an epistemic obligation of sorts on her to accept the conclusion. One person’s faith that God exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable. At the very least, having faith, where that means believing despite a lack of evidence or despite contrary evidence is highly suspect. Having faith is the questionable practice, not failing to have it.

4. Atheism is bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing.

These accusations have been dealt with countless times. But let’s suppose that they are correct. Would they be reasons to reject the truth of atheism? They might be unpleasant affects, but having negative emotions about a claim doesn’t provide us with any evidence that it is false. Imagine upon hearing news about the Americans dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki someone steadfastly refused to believe it because it was bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing. Suppose we refused to believe that there is an AIDS epidemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people in Africa on the same grounds.

5.Atheism is bad for you.Some studies in recent years have suggested that people who regularly attend church, pray, and participate in religious activities are happier, live longer, have better health, and less depression.

First, these results and the methodologies that produced them have been thoroughly criticized by experts in the field.Second, it would be foolish to conclude that even if these claims about quality of life were true, that somehow shows that there is theism is correct and atheism is mistaken.What would follow, perhaps, is that participating in social events like those in religious practices are good for you, nothing more.There are a number of obvious natural explanations.Third, it is difficult to know the direction of the causal arrow in these cases.Does being religious result in these positive effects, or are people who are happier, healthier, and not depressed more inclined to participate in religions for some other reasons?Fourth, in a number of studies atheistic societies like those in northern Europe scored higher on a wide range of society health measures than religious societies.

Given that atheists make up a tiny proportion of the world’s population, and that religious governments and ideals have held sway globally for thousands of years, believers will certainly lose in a contest over “who has done more harm,” or “which ideology has caused more human suffering.”It has not been atheism because atheists have been widely persecuted, tortured, and killed for centuries nearly to the point of extinction.

Sam Harris has argued that the problem with these regimes has been that they became too much like religions.“Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag, and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”

7.Atheists are harsh, intolerant, and hateful of religion.

Sam Harris has advocated something he calls “conversational intolerance.”For too long, a confusion about religious tolerance has led people to look the other way and say nothing while people with dangerous religious agendas have undermined science, the public good, and the progress of the human race.There is no doubt that people are entitled to read what they choose, write and speak freely, and pursue the religions of their choice.But that entitlement does not guarantee that the rest of us must remain silent or not verbally criticize or object to their ideas and their practices, especially when they affect all of us.Religious beliefs have a direct affect on who a person votes for, what wars they fight, who they elect to the school board, what laws they pass, who they drop bombs on, what research they fund (and don’t), which social programs they fund (and don’t), and a long list of other vital, public matters.Atheists are under no obligation to remain silent about those beliefs and practices that urgently need to be brought into the light and reasonably evaluated.

Real respect for humanity will not be found by indulging your neighbor’s foolishness, or overlooking dangerous mistakes.Real respect is found in disagreement.The most important thing we can do for each other is disagree vigorously and thoughtfully so that we can all get closer to the truth.

8.Science is as much a religious ideology as religion is.

At their cores, religions and science have a profound difference.The essence of religion is sustaining belief in the face of doubts, obeying authority, and conforming to a fixed set of doctrines.By contrast, the most important discovery that humans have ever made is the scientific method.The essence of that method is diametrically opposed to religious ideals:actively seek out disconfirming evidence.The cardinal virtues of the scientific approach are to doubt, analyze, critique, be skeptical, and always be prepared to draw a different conclusion if the evidence demands it.